The battle that has heretofore played out in the parking lot of George’s strip club – the Foxhole, a run-down, garage-like building at a Coshocton County crossroads called Newcastle – has shifted 7 miles east to Church Street.

Every weekend for the last four years, Dunfee and members of his ministry have stood watch over George’s joint, taking up residence in the right of way with signs, video cameras and bullhorns in hand. They videotape customers’ license plates and post them online, and they try to save the souls of anyone who comes and goes.

Now, the dancers have turned the tables, so to speak. Fed up with the tactics of Dunfee and his flock, they say they have finally accepted his constant invitation to come to church.

Gina Hughes spent the morning soaking up the sun in her striped bikini, mostly oblivious to the fire and brimstone being preached in the tidy church building.
…The 30-year-old married mother of six said she has danced at the Foxhole for a decade and holds the title of “house mom.” That means that even though she still dances, she also watches out for the six other women who work there.
…
She said she makes $2,000 a week.

I’ve known a few dancers; 2000 a week is unlikely on a regular basis. The house mom will get tipped by the other dancers, though, and maybe paid by the house. She’s usually in charge of keeping the dressing room in order.

Sorry, I walked away from that thread with an open post that made a good point I’d like to acknowledge..

Yes, of course you are right that there are additional management burdens in dealing with people in a radically different time zone, with very different cultural standards whom you have not met in person. And I would not be surprised to find senior management not plan for this (“You’re reading the same code, right?”)

Let me put it this way: I live in Columbus and had no idea where Warsaw was. I put it in Google Maps and had to zoom out 5 times before I could get my bearings. It’s a good 40 miles from the nearest interstate.

But hey, if she can pull down $2k a week, then more power to her. That’s probably about 5% of that town’s GDP.

@Jayackroyd: They don’t plan for it because they never actually deal with it themselves.
And since that’s vaguely related to me in a tangential way, I do plan for it only to get to see it canned for cost savings.
I then tell them it’s going to bite them in the ass and it’s better to save the money by ramping up correctly in the first place.
That gets canned too because if you add that piece to the flow chart, and budget X hours for someone on staff to actually manage the situation the cost savings margins go from N to N-%. And guess what? They don’t get their bonus if the project isn’t greenlighted at N.

One day I’m going to stop drinking long enough to write a book about it all.
Ah, who am I kidding? I’m never going to stop drinking.

@Jayackroyd: It’s actually sort of nice having coders in other time zones if you’ve got everything working well. As I was leaving the office in London, people in SF are just getting in to work. The next day when I come in, it’s like code faeries have come in overnight and made everybody shoes.

“In response to a flood of Facebook and YouTube videos that depict police abuse, a new trend in law enforcement is gaining popularity. In at least three states, it is now illegal to record any on-duty police officer.

Even if the encounter involves you and may be necessary to your defense, and even if the recording is on a public street where no expectation of privacy exists.”

$2000 a week is hard for even the most alluringly, seductively attractive dancers to make, even in the most upscale “Gentlemen’s Club”, unless they offer “takeout service” to selected clients. That’s in substantial part because the most exploitative aspect of most such establishments’ relation with their dancers, by far, is the compensation structure. You may naively think that the basic deal is: the establishment makes its money off cover charges, drinks, and sometimes food, and the dancers make their money by getting to keep all tips, “couch dance” earnings, etc. However, that’s not quite the case.

A large portion of such establishments actually charge each dancer a substantial fee per night for the privilege of dancing there – a minimum “nut” she must make from customers before she even starts taking home any money for herself. Others charge a smaller nightly fee, but charge the dancer what amounts to an up-front excise “tax” on every fee she manages to earn from a customer for a “couch” or “VIP” room dance, which is where the real gravy money is for a dancer, not the $1 tips when its her turn out on the dancing runway in front of all the patrons. In fact, one of the main purposes of the (usually beefy) bouncer manning the entrance to the couch/VIP dance rooms is not simply protection of the girls from an improperly over-aggressive customer, but protection of the establishment and its valuable liquor license from the portion of over-entrepreneurial women tempted to offer extra “services” in these areas in return for much more substantial cash the dancer keeps all to and for herself.

I’m not saying here that uber-mom claiming $2000 per week earns that amount in such underground fashion, or that this club doesn’t treat its dancers much better than a great many clubs do, but the preacher’s concern about the nudity and sexually titillating aspect of these clubs misses entirely the most substantive reasons why such clubs may not be such a socially healthy way for women to make money – the club may be exploiting them nearly as aggressively as a street pimp would.

As the Bob Inglisses, Jim Leach’s and Lincoln Chafee’s continue to get rooted out of the GOP we are ending up with a strong wingnut emulsion. That distilled blend of war mongering and religious fanaticism lead by hollow men and women like Newt and Sarah is perched and ready to pounce after November.

They are going to be in a witch burning mood.

Meanwhile the stars in Israel, the Levant and greater Middle East are aligning for for more holy wars.

The late 20th and early 21st century has seen a restoration of the New Testament figure of Mary Magdalene as a patron of women’s preaching and ministry. Her new popularity has stemmed in part from the recognition that Mary Magdalene has suffered from what some believe to have been a historical defamation of character. She has been thought to be misidentified as a repentant prostitute in historical tradition, and depicted in art as a weeping sinner wiping Jesus’ feet with her hair. Some New Testament scholarship has shown that this picture of Mary Magdalene is not true.[5]

In the text she’s actually the leader of a group of female apostles and honored among the most of all the apostles.

Which of course in the Roman Catholic medieval tradition means that since she’s not the Virgin Mary, she must be a whore, since women could lead nothing significant.

…the preacher’s concern about the nudity and sexually titillating aspect of these clubs misses entirely the most substantive reasons why such clubs may not be such a socially healthy way for women to make money – the club may be exploiting them nearly as aggressively as a street pimpsubstantial white Christian conservative local businessman who employed poor and pliable young women would.

My Freshman year in college, my fraternity took me to my first ever strip club. Some local church was doing the exact same thing, waiting around with video cameras and signs and the like.

It was kind of weird feeling. Those people are dicks. It’s behavior like that which turns me OFF towards religion, not guilts me into being a good boy.

Did not The Christ say something along the lines of:

“Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Friend, let me take out the speck in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye. “

It also says:
He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.

It always amuses me when these loudmouths who claim they are Christian get so self-righteous about gays and that they are just following what’s in the bible. But then they deliberately ignore EVERYTHING else that is in the bible. Just like this church, for example. Surely, the pastor is not claiming to be without sin, is he?

@kommrade reproductive vigor: Seconded. Seriously, people want to read the damn blog, want to participate in the discussions, wnat to know know about Tunch, et al., but the current formatting issues are making it a real pain in the ass. Can something be done? If so, please do so when you have the chance. Thank you.

One thing the Jehovah’s Witnesses have 100% correct is their apolitical stance. They will NEVER try to legislate or use the courts to get their agenda passed. Ever. Which made this a really interesting article:

It always amuses me when these loudmouths who claim they are Christian get so self-righteous about gays and that they are just following what’s in the bible. But then they deliberately ignore EVERYTHING else that is in the bible.

First of all, the Bible is a wonderful thing. It allows anyone – liberal or conservative, woman or man, master or slave, priest or laity – to read the book and walk away with all of their preconceived notion of how the world works completely and utterly justified. It’s truly an incredible book that brings all kinds of people together to fight with each other about what it says.

Pick an agenda and read the book with that agenda in mind and you’ll see it. Read it thinking “the Bible is all about economic justice” and you’ll see enough passages to convince you that the overriding theme of the book is that you should work to end poverty and bring about a socialist utopia on Earth. Read it thinking “the Bible is all about sinners and God’s Wrath” and you can walk away assured that it really is all about God’s Wrath towards sin – even in the New Testament. Read it thinking “the Bible is all about God’s Plan for Armageddon and the New Jerusalem that will arise from the ashes of this world” and I’ll be damned the whole book is just a roadmap to the Apocalypse! (Nicely ending with the Revelation, just to emphasize that point).

You can defend almost any position you hold using the “Good Book”. Which is why devout pacifists can turn to it for inspiration at the same time that Generals can quote from it before bombing the enemy into submission. It’s an amazing cypher of a work that anyone can project their beliefs onto and have them verified. No wonder the damn thing causes so many fights.

WOO HOO…..shit I live like 15 minutes from the Foxhole…..should I go on assignment for ballon-juice readers? Just to correct Newcastle/ the Foxhole is about 20 west of I-77 right off the Knox-Coshocton county line. I have known about the church stalking the club for years…..including a few years a make shift attempt at a bomb was found in the dumpster by the club. No charges were ever filed….. I know they blamed the scum bag minister.
this is the first i have heard of the dancers fighting back…hmmm some how this hasnt made our local paper.
truly inspired!

@Punchy: That’s a common misunderstanding. MM and the prostitute were different women, but certain Church luminaries started conflating the stories early in the game in order to justify reducing women’s “scandalous” authority in Christian affairs. Mission accomplished!

You can defend almost any position you hold using the “Good Book”. Which is why devout pacifists can turn to it for inspiration at the same time that Generals can quote from it before bombing the enemy into submission. It’s an amazing cypher of a work that anyone can project their beliefs onto and have them verified. No wonder the damn thing causes so many fights.

You would get the same results if people considered “Alice in wonderland” as a sacred text instead of the bible. It’s not the books, it is humanity.

The only thing more popular than hippie punching at balloonjuice is mocking religion.

the right to religious beliefs needs to be guarded carefully, but that doesn’t mean that the beliefs themselves (i.e. the content and its manifestations) need to be accorded respect.

indeed, the core idea on which any religion rests – life after death – is such an obvious con, so illogical, counter-intuitive, and without any evidence, that one can indeed not argue with it, only mock it (or, in the case of people who are really badly off and clinge to it as their only hope, while not pestering others with it, ignore it).